Summary: TEHRAN (FNA)- An American grass breeder has rediscovered a
forage grass that seems just right for today's intensive rotational
grazing.

A farmer's report of an unusual forage grass led Michael
Casler, an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) geneticist at the
agency's US Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, Wis., to
identify the grass as meadow fescue. Meadow fescue has been long
forgotten, although it was popular after being introduced about 50 to 60
years before tall fescue.

ARS is US Department of Agriculture's principal intramural scientific research agency.

Casler has developed a new variety of meadow fescue called Hidden
Valley, and its seed is being grown for future release.

Non-toxic fungi called endophytes live inside meadow fescue,
helping it survive heat, drought and pests. Unlike the toxic endophytes
that inhabit many commercial varieties of tall fescue and ryegrass,
meadow fescue does not poison livestock.

Charles Opitz found the grass growing in the deep shade of a
remnant oak savannah on his dairy farm near Mineral Point, Wis. He
reported that the cows love it and produce more milk when they eat it.
Casler used DNA markers to identify Opitz's find.

Meadow fescue is very winter-hardy and persistent, having survived
decades of farming. It emerged from oak savannah refuges to dominate
many pastures in the Midwest's driftless region, named for its lack
of glacial drift, the material left behind by retreating continental
glaciers.

Casler and his colleagues have since found the plant on more than
300 farms in the driftless region of Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota.
Geoffrey Brink, an ARS agronomist working with Casler, discovered that
meadow fescue is 4 to 7 percent more digestible than other cool-season
grasses dominant in the United States.

In another study, meadow fescue had a nutritional forage quality
advantage over tall fescue and orchardgrass that may compensate for its
slightly lower annual yield further north, as reported in the Agronomy
Journal. Also, the yield gap begins to close with the frequent
harvesting involved in intensive grazing.

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